


Mirror

by unikorento (tinypinkmouse)



Series: Purpose [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-22 19:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinypinkmouse/pseuds/unikorento
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This wasn’t the first time John tried exorcising him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Follows [Purpose](http://unikorento.livejournal.com/6928.html), [Second Wind](http://unikorento.livejournal.com/14471.html) and [Climbing Out](http://unikorento.livejournal.com/20955.html), and will probably make more sense if read after those. Set after 2x22, All Hell Breaks Loose: Part II. Assumes knowledge of later occurring characters and events. Many thanks to [](http://applegeuse.livejournal.com/profile)[**applegeuse**](http://applegeuse.livejournal.com/) for the beta (and for never reminding me that it was late, and that I had work in the morning).

This wasn’t the first time John tried exorcising him. In the span of the two weeks they’d spent on the road, John had started the chant three times.

Crowley had beat him down after each attempt, of course. He’d made him writhe and cry out and scratch his fingers bloody on the ground and leave a wet, red smear as he crawled to get away. But it was mostly on a question of principle, they both knew that.

If John Winchester could have been cowed by physical pain, Alastair would have already made it happen, and the two of them wouldn’t be above ground right now. So Crowley had punished him because he’d promised he would, there was simply no way around it, but he hadn’t thought for a minute that it would do any good.

John tried to fight him, because it was the only thing John knew how to do. Crowley suspected that wasn’t even the hell-gone part of him. The human John wouldn’t have been that different.

So he really felt like he should have been better prepared for this. He should have understood already after that first night, when he’d dragged John’s wheezing, feeble form out of the hospital - when the firmer he’d squeezed, the harder John had fought him. Ignoring a Winchester was the only way to keep one in line.

Azazel had known it. He’d lead John around on a string for over 20 years, by simply never giving him the time of day.

Crowley’s error in judgment was what had lead him here. And now he was caught in a Devil’s trap made of crayon, on a motel parking lot in Tuscon in the middle of the night.

“John,” he started to say, but the sound turned into a gut-wrenching cough that nearly had him bent double. “Don’t,” he croaked.

John stared at him like a dog about to bite - absolutely still, absolutely tense. A single word, a twitch of a muscle would set him off.

His hand held a knife, small and sharp with a plastic handle. He would have had to get it from a shop, nothing Crowley had available was quite so thug-like. Or so cheap. The crayon he’d used to draw the lines was lying discarded by his shoes.

Crowley would have to make a quake big enough to crack the asphalt to get out. Harder to do outside than inside, bigger area to take in, but Crowley knew he could do it. Easily even. He just needed a minute.

And then John held up his hand and clenched it into a fist, and Crowley fell to his knees with a gurgled cry, a thin sliver of blood falling from between his lips. The pain was all inside of him, John hadn’t even stepped towards the trap. It was a basic torture spell, the kind Alastair used when he was feeling lazy. Easy, but effective. Even a human could do it, with a little practice.

“I don’t believe any of it,” John snarled, like he was answering something Crowley had just said, instead of responding to a conversation they’d had over a week ago. “I don’t believe you.”

“I knew you had it in you, John” Crowley answered, smiling bloody up at him, even when he felt fear loud as a jet-engine roar to life in his mind. “Atta boy.”

Lilith would want to know how he got himself exorcised. Where, and by whom. Crowley would have to bloody well re-invent convincing to not raise suspicions.

He should have expected this. John had been so compliant with Crowley’s plan, at hearing about Dean’s deal and the ticking clock. Crowley had thought it was the shock - but of course, it had been denial all along. This was just inevitable fallout. Much more well-planned, stronger fallout than Crowley had seen coming, but that was no excuse.

“Tell me what your angle is, and where to find the boys, and I’ll leave you alive,” John said, and Crowley snorted with pained laughter.

“You can’t save them without me, John,” Crowley said.

He was going for reasonable, but coming out smug - which was a common enough problem for demons in negotiations, though not one that had bothered Crowley in over a century. John just had a way of getting under his skin.

“I told you. We’re looking for Ruby, so we can find out what she knows. You’re not seeing the boys because you’re not ready yet.”

John made an angry sound, but it was drowned out by the squeak and drag of all the cars in the lot moving restlessly side-ways in their parked places.

Crowley’s eyes went wide. It was unbelievable. Young demons couldn’t carry this sort of punch.

“John, you have to stop this,” he said, urgently, and quite honestly. Not a trace of smugness now. Christ on a stick, John’s eyes hadn’t even turned black.

John rewarded him with another burst of clenching, ripping pain in his gut.

“Where are my sons?” he asked.

“John, this is the wrong kind of power you’re using,” Crowley said, sounding somehow slurred to his own ears. His body felt limp, and he had the feeling that there wasn’t much left of it on the inside at this point. “You’re using energy like a spirit, like... like a poltergeist. You have to stop it.”

John snorted.

“I’m an evil thing,” he said, like that explained it.

Only it bloody well didn’t, because demons weren’t the same as spirits. The thing they had in common was that they had both once been human - but spirits were mindless in their suffering, and demons were very much aware. John, it seemed, was half-way to being both.

Crowley wished, hard, that he’d come to realize this when he wasn’t trapped and weakened.

“Now where are my sons?” John demanded again, and his voice was thick with barely checked anger.

Crowley shook his head, tried to gather himself enough to crack the ground, and felt John resist him.

“We’re on the same side, you idiot. And you can find them just fine without me,” he croaked, looking up. “But, John, you won’t save them without me.”

And that had obviously been the wrong thing to say. Crowley really wasn’t on a roll today. A car engine roared to life somewhere behind him.

“I will _always_ save them,” John said levelly, the boy voice sounding deeper, older than what it could possibly be.

And then he was chanting again, and Crowley felt the words like hooks, sinking into him and dragging him upwards, trying to force him out of his body.

He held on, fighting for each breath, and watched John’s face. He saw him stammer over the words, once, twice as the same cough that was clenching around Crowley took hold of him.

John looked incredulous, truly surprised, and stopped dead, but only for a second. He didn’t give up until he’d fallen to his knees, face red and voice hoarse, dry-heaving and fingers digging into the asphalt like claws, trying to anchor himself.

John looked up and met Crowley’s eyes, and for a second Crowley was sure that he’d finish the chant anyway, and send them both spiralling down to Hell. Crowley couldn’t believe he’d been so wrong. But then John’s gaze went wide, understanding and terror settling clear as day on his face.

He swallowed, and rocked back to simply sit on the ground. The car engine died, and the pressure around Crowley lessened.

John stared at Crowley, and Crowley watched him, the only sound in the air their ragged panting. Crowley could have howled with relief - because at least he’d gotten this part right. Whatever was left of John, and whatever had been added, at least this was a truth universal enough to apply even to him. No one who had been to Hell would ever willingly go back.

“Let me out, lad,” he commanded gently, and John rose shakily to his feet.

He blurred the line of the Devil’s trap, and Crowley was out the second he felt the wall crumble.

They stood facing each other for a moment, until Crowley jerked his chin at their car. They crossed the lot in silence, avoiding the chalk lines, and got in. John took the wheel - he was obsessive about driving - and Crowley let him.

It wasn’t until a few streets later, as he felt the car jolt into higher gear, that Crowley could make himself glance to the side to get a look at John’s face.

The yellow street lights danced across his pale, boy skin like a canvas. He barely blinked, he definitely didn’t slow down, and the car criss-crossed its way through mostly dead streets, out of the sleeping city, and on to the highway.

John handled the machine like he was possessing it, like it was a part of him. He punished the engine for his own cowardice, and Crowley understood.

He wouldn’t have to raise a hand to him ever again. Tonight had been the last time John Winchester would ever try an exorcism.


End file.
